Diversity defines Catholics of the '90s: LA is a microcosm of sweeping changes occurring nationwide - Los Angeles, CA - Cultual Diversity in the Catholic Church - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 17, 1997 by Leslie Wirpsa

LOS ANGELES--Two Anglo women began grumbling softly to each other during a recent religious education session here when they realized they could not understand the language being used on the video.

The creation stories told during the November workshop at the San Gabriel, Calif., regional religious conference began with a bold video version of Genesis in Spanish.

The women's dissatisfaction subsided minutes later, however, when an African-American man bellowed a black spiritual poem, a slightly different account of that same first chapter of the Bible.

"He's telling the story we heard in the Spanish video," a bilingual Latina explained to the English-speakers during the session at Baldwin Park High School in East Los Angeles. A conversation ignited.

The women stopped chatting only when two Chinese dancers appeared on stage to communicate through their art the story of Pan Gu, the mythological Chinese being who created sky and earth and from whose dying body sprang the wormlike Nu Woe, the mother of humanity.

After Pan Gu, a slide show narrated the story of "The Broken Bamboo," a Philippine tale from the southern island of Mindanao that teaches how abundance flows from that which has been broken. And the conference theme celebrated the storytelling traditions of the "first people who lived, worked and played" in this region of the United States, the Native American Indians.

Conferences like the one held in San Gabriel--attended by about 1,200 people--might surprise some Catholics accustomed to more Eurocentric experiences of worship. But living the Catholic faith amid a diversity of cultural viewpoints has become common practice in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

`This is church'

"We don't do these things because it's nice to do it or because it's politically correct," said Sr. Gretchen Hailer, vocations director for the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and a former teacher of world religions. "We do it because this is church. This is the Catholic church. It's another way of entering the sacred, through experience. It introduces us into the great mystery of God."

In Los Angeles, the largest diocese in the United States with 3.6 million Catholics --4.5 million by informal tallies--people worship God and create Catholic community in many tongues. The story of the glory and of the life of God resonates in parishes through African-American gospel music and mariachis. It becomes incarnate in Mexican posadas and Philippine celebrations of Simbang Gabi. It resides within Advent wreaths-and Pueblo Indian circles of prayer.

Los Angeles, perhaps the most diverse archdiocese in the United States, is an intense example of the kind of change occurring on a smaller scale in parishes across America. The archdiocese here serves Catholics of 102 different ethnicities. It is home to a multilingual church where weekend Masses are said, according to conservative estimates, in 55 languages. As an institution in the world, the church here must respond to a complex society where North, South, East and West, rich and poor, glitz and pain all collide. Here, being church is a wonderful and difficult task.

"Wherever you are (in Los Angeles), there's diversity. It's not just racial, but it's age, sexual orientation, economic, political, educational, literacy," said Fr. Kenneth Deasey of St Agatha's Catholic Church, a largely African-American and Latino parish in South Central Los Angeles.

With such widespread diversity and rapidly shifting demographics, however, come problems, according to Los Angeles Catholic leaders. There are tensions over emerging models of church, shortages of language-skilled priests, resistance from some Catholics to non-Eurocentric representations of faith, and a general, ongoing struggle to find ways to unify the church as one body of Christ while also respecting each culture.

It's a constant debate between "separate but equal, versus we are all the church and it is messy," Hailer said. Bishop Gabino Zavala heads the pastoral region of San Gabriel, one of the most diverse areas of the city. He said the diversity of his region "is a gift and a blessing, when it can be appreciated.' But this blessing, he said, is often misunderstood.

"Different people come with different structures. Another question is space--the space of people coming together in community--with the changing demographics and the different way people look at parish," Zavala said.

Hanging on to power

One difficulty with the demographic shifts and multiplicity of cultural needs is that at times "the older Anglo community has it's own issue of feeling like it is disappearing, but people are wanting to hang onto their power and position in the parish," Zavala said.

Other church leaders said that different immigrant and ethnic groups may also find it difficult to understand one another's cultural needs and particularities.

Zavala himself is an immigrant whose father worked as an undocumented laborer. Zavala's parents brought him and his five siblings from the Mexican state of Michoacan to Tijuana when he was a baby. After his father died in a fire, Zavala's mother brought her children to Los Angeles.